Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

You know how there are some movies that even after all these years still click. Their stars have long passed on, the politics of their day have shifted, and some elements aren't as risque or daring as they once were but regardless, they click. (Maybe Nietzsche was right about time being a flat circle.)

Frank Tashlin's Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? -- while deviating from the premise of George Axelrod's original stage play -- is such an example. In the sixty-five years since its release, its satirical portrayal of celebrity and fan culture is all the more prevalent thanks to the advent of social media. (Good thing Tashlin isn't around to see fiction become reality.)

Being a former animator, Tashlin's background is very apparent throughout Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? With enough visual gags that wouldn't look out of place in your standard cartoon, it shows that he was one of the more unique directors working at the time. It's little wonder that Tashlin was a mentor to Jerry Lewis.

On a similar note, there's enough fourth wall-breaking in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? to warrant calling a mason afterwards. Be it towards the stars' private lives or their professional ones, Tashlin's script spares no expense. (Man, comedies from the 1950s were something else, weren't they?)

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? starts to lose steam by the third act but Tashlin and the cast make it work nonetheless. Being made when sex comedies were becoming commonplace, it has the distinction of being just a touch classier than later titles. (Faint praise, granted.) Hey, the sexual revolution (and the MPAA's fruition) was only a few years away.

My Rating: ****